Air Dance Bernasconi artistic director Jayne Bernasconi hangs upside down from a trapeze during an aerial dance performance.

• Ever wonder where belly dancers learn their moves? We’ll meet two Baltimore locals, Nikki Traylor Knowles and Dori Witt, who teach their students the secrets of this five-thousand-year-old dance tradition
• We’ll take a trip to Baltimore’s Evergreen House, an oasis for lovers of music, art, and beautiful things, both past and present
• We’ll meet the young and charismatic Chinese piano sensation, Lang Lang, who shares his philosophy about music as a language of its own
• We’ll visit a rehearsal of the gravity-defying aerial dance troupe, Air Dance Bernasconi
• We’ll share a reflective dose of freestyle poetry from Baltimore spoken word artist Adlib
• And a trek through the surreal poetic landscape of one of Baltimore’s most disturbed minds, Rupert Wondolowski.

Baskt Theatre was designed in 1922 by Russian artist Leon Baskt. Mrs. Garrett herself often performed on this stage for her friends wearing costumes designed by Baskt

The columns were inspired by a book on Russian folk art from Evergreen’s library

These masks were designed by students from the Baltimore Freedom Academy

This Air Dance Bernasconi aerial dancer hangs upside down from a ribbon of silk.

04.01.05 events calendar…

Fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen was born two hundred years ago. In honor of the late great writer of The Ugly Duckling, Thumbelina, and more than a hundred other children’s stories, Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library will be hosting a weekend of storytelling, costumes, and crafts for kids. Fairy Tale Extravaganza gets underway tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and continues Sunday from 1 to 4:30 p.m. The library is at 400 Cathedral Street, and you can call 410 396-5402 for more information.

And another notice for book lovers: This weekend JHU Press is selling books by the pound. Books of all sizes, shapes, and varieties will be selling for the flat rate of two dollars a pound at the Glass Pavilion at the Hopkins Homewood Campus. That’s happening today from noon until 8 p.m. and tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. You can call 410 516-6900 for directions and more information.

Two dollars a pound is a tough price to beat, but there is one act in town that gives books away for free… if you’re willing to hunt through the disheveled stacks of The Book Thing of Baltimore. This long-standing non-profit organization is actually moving its thousands of donated books to a new location, and it needs help, financial help. That’s where Baltimore’s rock club, The Ottobar, comes into the picture. Next Tuesday night, The Ottobar hosts a Book Thing benefit starting at 8 p.m. You can check out the bill of poets, dancers and musicians, and find out other details at www.theottobar.com.

And if you venture outdoors this weekend you’ll find some of your fellow Marylanders hip-deep in more than a hundred different garbage-clogged streams throughout the region. Project Clean Stream would love for you to put on your waders and join them from 9 a.m. to noon tomorrow for this annual event, when they hope to remove several tons of trash from the water. You can find out more details at 410 377-6270, or on the web at www.alliancechesbay.org.